Shi Jing, The Book of Odes: Lessons from the States, Odes Of Zheng

[x_los]

Back after the Christmas/New Year break! I'd really like to get through the Book of Odes in the next months, so we can enter into our next Tang or Song offering. I'll try to be more regulated in the poem posts accordingly. 

Some notes:

* Every week I search the poems' English results to see if I can find any scholarship or neat bits and pop the results in Resources. Here is this week's collection.

* I believe the reminder emails have stopped, so I'll seek a new service to run that. 

When the second batch of these is up and running, if you would like not to be on the list and there isn't an unsubscribe option in the email itself, please just respond 'unsubscribe' or something and I'll take you off the reminder roster.

* IF YOU HAVE FRIENDS WHO MIGHT LIKE TO JOIN or have other ideas, please let me know on this post.

* If you haven't read it yet, chapter one, on tetrasyllabic shi poetry, in How to Read Chinese Poetry is hugely useful for the Book of Odes, imo.

**NEXT BATCH FEB 1.**

Comments

Re: 81. 遵大路 - Zun Da Lu

[forestofglory]

Thanks for posting the second translation. I'm finding a lot of these translations stiff which makes them feel very emotionally distant to me.

Also the translations of the last line of each part are radically different!

Re: 82. 女曰雞鳴 - Nu Yue Ji Ming

[superborb]

Aww, this poem is so cute.

Baidu says the morning star be not shining is the husband's response -- it's not timeeeeee to wake up yet the stars are still out!! And then the wife is like, you gotta go bag those birds. (Unclear if this is total consensus on the poem lol)

The ornaments are apparently a gift from the husband to the wife as a love token. The last stanza lists some of the things the wife is (caring/appreciative, agreeable/considerate, in love with) and how he repays them with tokens. (I.. am like 90% sure; the language is a bit too sparse for me to completely parse)

Re: 83. 有女同車 - You Nu Tong Che

[superborb]

I know this is so wrong, but I could not help reading the title as "lesbian cars" lolol. (女同 is modern slang for lesbian)

V disappointing I'm sure; this is a different Jiang than Jiang Yanli.

WHY does Legge translate hibiscus to hedge tree. PLEASE. Baidu says it's bc the hibiscus flowers are red and white (presumably, her cheeks are red and the rest of her face is white)
Also instead of "move about" why not light like a bird flying (baidu's gloss), which is a much prettier image than SOME Legge has chosen to translate literally

Meng Jiang (eldest daughter Jiang) is now a generic term for a beauty according to Baidu

It seems that this poem was used to help determine the historical pronunciation of the words here -- via the fact that the two poems are v similar except for a few words, and following the assumption that they should rhyme.

Re: 84. 山有扶蘇 - Shan You Fu Su

[superborb]

Baidu says this is a poem where a girl is teasing her sweetheart. Zidu and Zichong are an ancient beautiful man and an ancient husband(? beloved?).

Re: 87. 褰裳 - Qian Chang

[superborb]

This collection has so many poems where there is a woman mocking her lover?? An interesting theme haha.

Also interesting bc of the ambiguity in Chinese -- Legge has to choose that "I" will cross the river, vs Baidu's vernacular translation has the narrator telling her lover to cross the river. Original does not specify!

Re: 88. 丰 - Feng

[superborb]

I read the ending as her wishing that one day the guy will send the carriage (to marry her), even though her parents disapproved / denied them once?

The single garment that she puts on seems to be a cloak (to protect from the wind) from Baidu's gloss.

Re: 89. 東門之墠 - Dong Men Zhi Shan

[superborb]

I /think/ Baidu is saying some fluffy words about how the first is like, the man looking at the scene where the woman is in the house and it's all like domestic; then the second is the woman thinking of a prosperous scene of houses in the city.

I'm having trouble determining if this is fluffy humanities stuff or just lost-in-translation x.x

Re: 90. 風雨 - Feng Yu

[superborb]

Baidu notes for a lot of these poems (inc this one) that ancient scholars read it as "思君子" (thinking gentleman? I don't quite know what this is supposed to mean exactly) vs modern scholars who think it's about husband/wife reunion or waiting for a lover.

Re: 91. 子衿 - Zi Jin

[superborb]

The "blue collar" bit refers to Zhou dynasty scholar robes. A bit weird that Legge is translating it to blue though -- the color should be black. (The word used now means blue/green usually, so it seems a mistranslation.)

Baidu says historically scholars thought it dealt with a school that was disbanded and the scholars dispersed. And/or a poem about depravity (? I'm not quite sure of this). But modern scholars think this is a love song.

Re: 92. 揚之水 - Yang Zhi Shui

[superborb]

It IS interesting that Baidu makes brief references to these poems having been historically interpreted as no loyal ministers or men, but now everyone thinks of it straightforwardly as about a women talking to her husband refuting gossip. And like other than the one throwaway line about that, it's nearly all about the more modern interpretations?

Re: 93. 出其東門 - Chu Qi Dong Men

[superborb]

Baidu says the grey coiffure is a dark green headscarf -- the idea is that she's wearing plain / poor clothing

Re: 94. 野有蔓草 - Ye You Man Cao

[superborb]

What I'm getting from this Baidu entry is that the Spring and Autumn period was a time of "free love". (bc there was frequent war?)

Re: 95. 溱洧 - Zhen Wei

[superborb]

I never know if I can't parse Baidu bc it's fluffy poetry interpretation stuff or genuinely a concept I don't understand haha. But Baidu says a lot about how it's the early Spring season, and how the two fulcrums of the poem are the two flowers (orchid and peony) and something about transformation from nature to people, landscapes to social customs Spring as a time of change as ice melts into spring floods and so the people also gather. That the main strong point of the poem is in how it portrays transformations. And so the orchid fades out and the peonies fade in.